Psychedelic ceremonies and rituals are (amongst other things) places for “the serious play of the imaginal in order to enhance people’s sense of connectedness, especially to their future self.” (John Vervaeke)
However, the serious play of the imaginal is only truly serious if it is in dialogue with a wisdom tradition. Gnosis without Pistis is as lame as Pistis without Gnosis is blind. (And without Kenosis both are unclean, diseased, leprous).
The imagined future self with which one is connected through serious play must of necessity be a wiser self, by definition connected more deeply with the wisdom contained in our inherited traditions.
There is no true Way without the serious play of Gnosis, Pistis, Kenosis, where “Way” is understood as a path, a process, a journey, an adventure, in which one’s future self, though dimly felt, is wiser, more connected, and so more real, more true, more alive, than the self one starts out with.
I think it’s fair to say that the serious play of the imaginal connected to a future self in dialogue with a wisdom tradition is (amongst other things) “the way, the truth and the life”. (John 14:6)
the way of the holy mushroom 